Argus-Xenica

Harmony Day

In Week 8, the school celebrated Harmony Day. This is a day to celebrate the Multiculturalism in Australia and recognise the different cultures and celebrations of our diverse cohort. 

Students worked on some different Harmony Day activities to how our understanding of inclusiveness and diversity. 

Reading

In Reading we have continued our work on making predictions using the images and pictures on the front cover and the title. Student shave been able to make a predictions about a book and use full sentences to respond such as 'I think this book will be about ' or 'I predict this book will be about  because ... '. We know that when we make a prediction we make an informed guess, using clues. 

To consolidate our understanding of letters and their sounds, we have been searching for certain letters in different words throughout texts. Each week we have been focusing on different letters and the fact that these can look different when written in a different font. 

This week, we looked for the letters e and m.

We have begun learning that High Frequency Words are words that appear throughout a lot of the texts that we read or are words that we speak in every day language. Students have begun to notice that some of these words are actually quite difficult to read as a handful of them are not able to be decoded. All students have received a pack of high frequency words in with their home readers. Please support your child's learning by practising these. A copy has been included below.

Encoding/Decoding

We have been learning all the letter and sounds in the alphabet. We have been using our sound-write program for students to use their knowledge of letters and sounds to blend and write different decodable words on mini whiteboards such at zip, jam, web . We have also been learning about the initial and ending sounds of words. 

Writing

In Writing, we learnt to build sentences by drawing and labelling pictures before writing a matching sentence. We developed an understanding that sentences are key units for expressing ideas and that sentences are made up of groups of words that work together to make meaning. We practised forming most lower-case and upper-case letters correctly and recognised the importance of capital letters at the beginning of sentences. We also learnt to use punctuation, such as full stops, to signal the end of a sentence. Additionally, we incorporated fine motor skills activities to support muscle development for handwriting, pencil control, grasping, holding, and pinching.

Maths

In maths the students practice daily counting from 1 to 20 and counting down from 10 to 0. The students also learned how to make collections. Our Prep students practiced counting how many objects they had in their collections and showed which collection has more or less. the students enjoyed exploring bigger and smaller collections by using counting teddies, unifix blocks and counters. Students have also been exploring picture graphs while learning about data. They worked on asking yes and no questions to collect data and represent it using pictures or drawings. 

Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

In SEL, students have been learning about the four zones of regulation: green, blue, yellow and red. They have practiced naming the colours of the zones to indicate if they are in the green zone feeling happy, calm, and ready to learn; blue zone feeling sad, sick or tired; yellow zone, feeling silly, worried or anxious; and red zone, feeling angry, upset or out of control. Our Prep students have also learned strategies to self regulate when they are in the blue, yellow or red zone. These strategies can help them move back to the green zone. Students have also explored how everyone can feel different in various situations or when dealing with problems. 

Inquiry 

In Inquiry, the children have been learning about importance of dialling 000 if there's a real emergency, as well as the valuable roles of community helpers, such police officers, paramedics, doctors, nurses, veterinarians, firefighters, and teachers. The children also had so much fun with the role-plays, which showed their solid understanding of what each community helper does to keep all of us healthy, safe, smart and happy. As part of their learning, St John's Ambulance also came to give them a better understanding to what to do in an emergency situation and how to call for an ambulance. 

Reminders

There are some important things that the Prep team would like to remind the Argus/Xenica families of: 

• Home Readers - these can be changed daily. 
• Home Reading Yellow Diaries - these need to be filled in and given to your child's teacher on a Friday to be checked.
• Students will receive special Reading certificate after they have read a specific amount of nights. 
• Library bags are to be returned to school with the book they borrowed.